The present invention relates to a method of generating a bill image and also to a computer-implemented billing system.
As telecommunications technologies advance, the number of service types available to the customer from telecommunications suppliers is increasing dramatically. A private customer may have a standard telephone line, a cardphone account and possibly access to network facilities such as call minding and 3-way calling, all of which may have to be billed to a single account. A business customer may have many more services such as ISDN, permanent leased data connections, or multiple lines connected to a single number. Each service type to be charged needs to be clearly and logically laid out on the printed bill so that the customer can easily determine what he is being charged for.
With the deregulation of the telecommunications industry and subsequent competition it has brought a large number of charging systems, discounting options and other offers to attract customers and compete with other telecommunications suppliers has introduced the need for further levels of detail in bills so the customer can readily appreciate the savings made.
A number of different discounting products or schemes may need to be supported. These may be introduced as promotions to all or selected customers, sold as a product to a customer or subject to the customer requesting to join the scheme. Examples of discounting products marketed by British Telecommunications public limited company include discounted Saturday calls, PremierLine and Friends and Family. A further discounting product offered, particularly to business users, is volume threshold discounting.
Typically, one of the problems in introducing new discounting products or changes to a discounting product is the time taken to implement appropriate changes to the computer software used to process customer usage records to determine whether they are eligible for a discount and then to determine the discount. A new discounting product to be offered, an alteration to the discount rate or eligibility criteria, or any other similar amendment requires program code to be updated or otherwise rewritten, sometimes at great expense. It is desirable to provide a bill processing system that provides a more flexible discounting system.
EP-A-809387 discloses a system for rating and billing telecommunications transactions in real-time. A so-called real-time analysis engine (RAE) updates customers"" bills in real-time by applying customer specific data (e.g. discount schemes) to automatic message accounting (AMA) records. An AMA record is generated for a call by a telecommunications switch and the record is passed to the RAE where the call is rated. The RAE then matches the rated call to the customer who initiated the call, locates the customer""s billing data, and applies to the call any discounts to which the customer is entitled. After the call has been rated and discounted, or xe2x80x9cpricedxe2x80x9d, it can be added to the customer""s other priced calls for the current billing period to generate a current bill for the customer. The RAE may also adjust charges for old calls to reflect certain types of billing plans. For example, a customer may receive a conditional 10% discount on all calls within a billing period provided that the customer exceeds $100 in total charges within the billing period. In such a case, calls will initially be billed at the full rate, until such time as the total charges reach $100. Thus, if the customer""s charges do reach $100 before the end of the billing period, not only will subsequent calls need to be discounted by 10%, but all previous calls will need to be discounted by 10%. This is the only example of retrospective discounting, the specification otherwise being solely concerned with real-time pricing. There is no disclosure of accumulating charges by time segments and calculating appropriate discounts from the accumulated charge segments.
WO-A-9849825 describes a method of processing xe2x80x9ccall detailed recordsxe2x80x9d (CDRs) which are used in the generation of bills. In the method, a graphical user interface is used to enable a user to select the data fields which are to be used to provide the data from which a bill is to be produced. Only such data as corresponds to the fields which have been selected will pass from the home telephone exchange to the billing centre. There is no reference to charge type identifiers, nor to the editing of bill images. Rather, the invention seems to be addressing problems of excess data (including blank fields) in a variety of formats being passed between telephone exchanges and billing centres; difficulties of adding or removing fields from CDRs; and the need for the suppliers of telephone exchange equipment to be notified as much as a year before installation of a telephone exchange of the format/field names, etc. which are to be used in the CDRs. Thus can be seen that the invention there set out is addressing a very different problem from the one addressed by the present invention.
In the paper xe2x80x9cA graphical tool for bill designxe2x80x9d, BT Technology Journal, Vol 12, No 4. pp 85-91, 1994, Utton and Saunders, there is described a tool to support the design of telephone bills. The tool allows a bill designer to modify the layout of a bill graphically, using a graphical user interface, and to receive feedback from a knowledge base embodying typographical guidelines and operational system constraints. In this way, the tool is able provide decision support for the bill design process. The tool is also able to generate the formating parameters requires by the operational systems to implement revised bill designs.
Using the graphical user interface, a designer is able to edit an image of a bill. There is, however, no discussion of discounting schemes nor of how they might affect bill generation.
The paper xe2x80x9cMultiservice billing systemxe2x80x94a platform for the futurexe2x80x9d, BT Technology Journal, Vol 14, No 3, pp 98-113, J Crookes gives an extensive overview of the complexities inherent in billing systems for a major telecommunications provider. It does not discuss the influence of discounting schemes on bill generation.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, a method of generating a bill image for a customer in a computer implemented billing system for a telecommunication network which includes discounts for a customer applied to calls during a billing period in which a plurality of discount schemes apply, include the steps of loading qualification criteria for the discount schemes and customer account details into the billing system, characterised in that the method further includes generation a data structure for each discount scheme, the data structures defining a time line over at least part of which the discount scheme was operative, the time line being divided in dependence on subscription to the discount scheme by the by customer and on changes to the discount scheme during the billing period into a number of segments each of which corresponds to a period during which a respective version of the discount scheme was operative, accumulating charges for the calls made during each segment, and subsequently calculating an appropriate discount from the accumulated charges for each segment for calls which qualify for a discount under the discount scheme.
Preferably, the step or accumulating the charges for the calls made during each segment includes accumulating the charges for calls made in each of a number of predetermined categories.
Preferably, the step of calculating the appropriate discount includes obtaining an appropriate discount rate associated with the respective version of the discount scheme for the predetermined category for which the charges have been accumulated and applying the discount rate to the accumulated charges.
Preferably, the step of generating the time line further includes the steps of determining date of the earliest made call of the calls made and, if the date falls before the start of the billing period, extending the billing period to include the date of the call.
Preferably, the method further includes the step of generating a discount usage record containing the calculated discount for use in the generation of the bill image.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, a computer implemented billing system includes at least one computer readable memory storing computer executable instructions for performing the method of the first aspect of the present invention.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, a computer implemented billing system is arranged to perform the following operations to generate a bill image which includes discounts for a customer applied to calls made during a billing period in which a plurality of discount schemes apply: generate a data structure for each discount scheme defining a time line over at least part of which the discount scheme was operative, the time line being divided in dependence on subscription to the discount scheme by the customer and on changes to the scheme during the billing period into a number of segments each of which corresponds to a period during which a respective version of the discount scheme was operative, accumulate charges for the calls made during each segment, and calculate an appropriate discount from the accumulated charges for each segment for calls which qualify for a discount under the discount scheme. In the present invention, in order to allow discounting products be applicable for part of a billing period, discounting products subscribed to by the customer and the dates on which they were active during the billing period are stored in a customer account database. The data in the customer account database is used to generate a line for each discounting product, the time line consisting of one or more segments. Each segment on the time line represents a period in which the discounting product was active and unchanged. Each segment is associated with a number of accumulators for storing of charges of usage records that qualify for the discounting product during the time period of the segment. The date of each usage record is compared with the time line data structure and if the date coincides with the period of one of the segments, the charge held in the usage record is added to the accumulator linked to that segment. Once all the usage records have been processed, discounts are calculated by obtaining the call types that qualify for the discount product and apply the correct discount rate to the sum stored in each accumulator of qualifying call types. For each discount calculated, a discount record is generated in which the discount and any other details necessary to display to the customer on their bill are stored.
The preferred example, hidden records relating to the discounting system are added to the electronic bill image which contain the data used to generate the products respective time line and a record for each product containing a copy of each segment and linked accumulators. This permits bill image to be subsequently disassembled and edited to correct any mistakes.